Followup To "When Teachers Are Obstacles To Linux"

An couple of anonymous readers wrote in to let us know about a followup to last Wednesday's story of the teacher who didn't believe in free software. The Linux advocate who posted the original piece has cooled off and graciously apologized for going off half-cocked (even though the teacher had done the same), and provided a little more background which, while not excusing the teacher's ignorance, does make her actions somewhat more understandable. Ken Starks has talked with the teacher, who has received a crash education in technology over the last few days — Starks is installing Linux on her computer tomorrow. He retracts his insinuations about Microsoft money and the NEA. All in all he demonstrates what a little honest communication can do, a lesson that all of us who advocate for free software can take to heart. "The student did get his Linux disks back after the class. The lad was being disruptive, but that wasn't mentioned. Neither was the obvious fact that when she saw a gaggle of giggling 8th grade boys gathered around a laptop, the last thing she expected to see on that screen was a spinning cube. She didn't know what was on those disks he was handing out. It could have been porn, viral .exe's...any number of things for all she knew. When she heard that an adult had given him some of the disks to hand out, her spidey-senses started tingling. Coupled with the fact that she truly was ignorant of honest-to-goodness free software, and you have some fairly impressive conclusion-jumping. In a couple of ways, I am guilty of it too."

Comments

Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[bruce_the_loon]

Don't rant first and ask questions later.

Reminds me of the old saying

[cabjf]

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." If either side had done some research or better communicating before yelling on the internet, this would have been a non-issue.

Re:Reminds me of the old saying

[Hatta]

Not really. The teacher still acted out of ignorance and fear. She deserved a good brow beating. Maybe next time she'll recognize her ignorance, and listen to her students instead of jumping to conclusions. Nothing damages the relationship between teacher and student than this kind of arbitrary and capricious exercise of power. Now the kids know that 1) the teacher is an idiot and 2) the teacher values obedience over correctness. This kind of behavior is absolutely not conducive to a constructive learning environment, and I hope that she's ashamed of herself.

A Happy ending

[jmorris42]

Yes the teacher brought the storm on herself. Not by being ignorant of open source but by being rude. This is a good object lesson about email more than anything else.

Helios was perfectly in the right to flame back, especially since he was pretty polite about it considering the pretty nasty slander the teacher was throwing at him. And even being ticked off he protected her identity so she won't have to suffer the consequences of her bad manners. Even better, after talking it over with her he appears to have turned the situation into a win. So high praise for him and since she seems to have learned something positive out of the mess lets give her a break now.

Apology takes strength.

[chaim79]

This guy is really showing some strength and intelligence, he has made a public apology, and is working with the teacher instead of continuing the rant. The teacher has gotten a serious shaking up from the OSS community (through the blog) and he is doing his best to make a win of this situation.

This could have very easily degenerated into some serious verbal warfare, lawsuits, etc.

While I was interested by the first blog post and kept watch for followup, this second post makes me want to really keep an eye on this guy, actions like this apology are usually a sign of someone that should be listened to.

Adobe? Google Earth? iTunes???? Free???!!!

[zojas]

in the blog, he provides a list of some of the software that the school makes available. but what he actually says is "Other open source software on both images include audacity and lame, and other Free Software such as Google Earth, iTunes, Adobe and many plug-ins."

Great, except for the part that Adobe, Google Earth, and most especially iTunes, are anything BUT Free Software. If he had said "free software" it would have been ok, but he deliberately went out of his way to capitalize it like the Free Software Foundation does. I'm pretty sure Adobe has produced absolutely no Free Software (Free as in Freedom, not free as in purchase price). and iTunes is certainly not Free; source is not available, and all the metadata for the iTunes library is locked in a proprietary, binary blob.

it's just shocking that this big-time supposed Free Software advocate doesn't even know how to spell free software!

Thanks

[Auraiken]

Sorry to hijack your thread, but I'd like to say that this is what I'd like to see more of on /. We have too many stories indicating that things are one way only to be found otherwise and not corrected on at all. There were a lot of people in other stories lately who've been saying how wrong mass media is in how they 'report' on stories that are just there to make money. IT also shows that the open source community needs to stop attacking the ignorant people... I mean they might be stupid and annoying sometimes but we aren't going to get anywhere unless we educate them. /rant